Background
Penguin Random House and DK are among the world's leading publishing organisations, operating extensive and diverse business functions across multiple UK locations. With large workforces, complex supply chains and critical operational dependencies, organisational resilience is essential to protecting day-to-day operations.
To strengthen their resilience framework, the organisations asked Maxwell Stephens to recruit an experienced Business Continuity Manager to lead business continuity planning, crisis management and operational resilience initiatives across their UK estate. The appointment was critical to ensuring that robust continuity plans, governance structures and emergency response procedures were in place to protect people, operations and business-critical services.
The Challenge
The brief called for a Business Continuity Manager capable of designing, implementing and continually improving a comprehensive business continuity framework across multiple UK sites. The remit covered:
- Planning and analysis — business continuity management, operational resilience planning, business impact analysis (BIA), enterprise risk assessment, and recovery planning and business resilience.
- Response — crisis management and incident response, disaster recovery planning, and emergency preparedness and response.
- Governance and assurance — governance and compliance reporting, training, testing and simulation exercises, and continuous improvement and risk mitigation.
- Engagement — cross-functional stakeholder engagement across Facilities, IT, HR and Governance, influencing senior stakeholders and embedding continuity strategies throughout the organisation.
That combination is what makes business continuity appointments hard to fill. Many candidates have the technical side — BIA methodology, risk assessment, plan writing. Far fewer can also persuade busy department heads to give continuity work priority, run an exercise that exposes weaknesses without alienating anyone, and stay effective when an actual incident is under way. The client needed technical expertise in risk management and business continuity together with strong leadership, stakeholder engagement and project management capability, and the ability to remain effective under pressure.
Our Approach
Understanding the Requirement
Maxwell Stephens worked closely with Penguin Random House and DK to understand their operational structure, resilience objectives and business continuity priorities. It was clear early on that the successful candidate would need significant experience developing continuity frameworks together with the leadership skills to drive engagement across a large and complex organisation, and we shaped the search around both.
Specialist Search
Drawing on our specialist network across Facilities Management, Operational Resilience and Business Continuity professionals, we conducted a targeted search for candidates with experience spanning business continuity management, crisis management, risk management, operational resilience, corporate governance, emergency planning, facilities and workplace operations, disaster recovery, and programme and project management.
Particular emphasis was placed on candidates who had developed and tested business continuity frameworks within large, multi-site organisations. Writing a plan for a single site is one thing; building one that holds across several locations with different functions and dependencies, and then proving it through exercises, is a different order of experience.
Candidate Assessment
Candidates were assessed against the full range of technical, operational and leadership competencies the role demanded: business continuity planning expertise, risk assessment and business impact analysis capability, crisis management experience, governance and compliance knowledge, emergency response planning, and training and exercise management. Alongside these we tested stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, project management and programme delivery, and leadership and communication ability.
The aim throughout was to identify an individual capable of strengthening organisational resilience while building engagement across multiple business functions.
The Outcome
Maxwell Stephens appointed an experienced Business Continuity Manager with a strong track record in operational resilience, crisis management and risk mitigation. The successful candidate brought extensive experience designing and implementing business continuity frameworks, alongside the leadership capability required to drive organisational preparedness. Their strengths included:
- Extensive business continuity and resilience experience, with proven business impact analysis and risk assessment capability.
- Strong crisis and incident management expertise.
- Experience leading continuity testing and simulation exercises.
- Strong governance and reporting knowledge.
- Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills, supported by effective programme and project management.
- A proactive and strategic approach to organisational resilience.
Following their appointment, the Business Continuity Manager assumed responsibility for developing and enhancing continuity arrangements across the organisation. The appointment delivered significant benefits across Penguin Random House and DK, including:
- Enhanced business continuity and resilience planning, with strengthened business impact analysis and risk assessment processes.
- Improved crisis management and incident response capability.
- More robust continuity testing and emergency preparedness exercises.
- Improved cross-functional collaboration between Facilities, IT, HR and Governance teams.
- Enhanced governance, reporting and resilience oversight.
- Greater organisational preparedness for operational disruptions, and increased confidence in recovery planning and business continuity arrangements.
The placement gave Penguin Random House and DK a Business Continuity Manager capable of safeguarding critical operations while supporting long-term resilience and risk management objectives.
Why This Placement Worked
Business continuity sits between facilities, IT, HR and governance, and belongs fully to none of them. Searches for these roles tend to fail when run purely as compliance appointments, because the person lacks the operational grounding to make plans work on the ground, or purely as facilities appointments, because the analytical depth is missing. Maxwell Stephens' network spans both worlds, which is what allowed us to find someone credible in each.
We support corporate organisations, professional services firms, educational institutions and commercial occupiers with specialist recruitment across business continuity, operational resilience, crisis and risk management, facilities management, workplace operations, emergency planning and strategic leadership appointments. If you need someone to protect critical operations and maintain continuity across a complex estate, get in touch with our team.